im stealing and reposting this because even without any added commentary it should be a self-evidently ridiculous example of the way that the panic over AI art has led to an overtly (and in some cases, explicitly) religious concern over the Sanctity of the Human Soul taking the spotlight from any discussion of labor rights or creative implications, but if i just reblogged the post on its own i run the risk of a smoothbrain assuming i actually agree with it. no i didn’t add the circle and no i don’t know why it’s there either
Too many people have only one real problem with AI art, and that’s that it looks ugly to them. That’s how I know all the screaming and whining about how AI is ruining everything is going to die down once AI art stops standing out so much and starts blending into the background. The majority of the people panicking don’t care about jobs, they don’t care about artistic integrity, they don’t care about IP law, they just don’t want to look at ugly art and they want to rationalize their reaction into a moral imperative.
Once the AI images look “good enough”, these staunch advocates of the fair treatment and wellbeing of artists will go back to looking the other way when artists continue to suffer under low pay and crushing deadlines, when artists continue to have their work stolen by capitalists with little or no compensation. It didn’t start with AI image generation and it won’t end with it. It will only end with real class consciousness and the education to understand the underlying issues at the root of it all.
